A fake resignation letter, announcing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell would step down, caught at least one senator and a conservative pundit off-guard Tuesday.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-UT, posted the letter on his X page Tuesday, with red siren emojis and the caption “Powell’s out!”
Lee deleted the post but not before a journalist for Politico screen-captured it and posted it to her own X page.
“There appeared to be [a resignation letter], and it occurred to me seconds after I posted it that I hadn’t seen it anywhere else, so I deleted it out of an abundance of caution,” Lee told The Hill on Tuesday.
The letter was addressed to “The President” and featured nonsensical characters in its re-creation of the Fed seal – hinting perhaps at artificial intelligence generation. The text also featured a minor typo and at least two badly breaking lines.
It wouldn’t be the first time Lee has hastily posted false reports on his social media accounts. The senator last July posted his condolences alongside a hoax release announcing the death of former President Jimmy Carter, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. Carter did not die until December.
Lee wasn’t the only public figure fooled by the fake Powell letter. Conservative commentator Benny Johnson likewise posted the letter, deleted it and acknowledged the error in a subsequent post.
“The Jerome Powell letter is fake,” Johnson wrote Tuesday on X. “Please don’t share it. Sorry. Bad look. I still want Jerome Powell to resign really bad.”
Powell, facing mounting pressure to resign over his reluctance to lower interest rates – along with an over-budget renovation at the central bank – is still Fed chair as of Wednesday.
Elsewhere on social media Tuesday, James Blair, the White House’s deputy chief of staff, confirmed he will visit the site of the Fed renovation project Thursday.
“They relented this morning,” Blair posted, referring to the Fed. “We go Thursday!”
The central bank had offered to allow Blair to tour the site last Friday at 7 p.m., The Washington Times reported.
“We rejected that,” Blair told the publication. “I don’t think after hours on a weekend is when we want to be there. … We want to see what’s going on. We want to see what the construction is like.”
President Donald Trump appointed Blair to the National Capital Planning Commission on July 9 – though the NCPC’s release refers to Blair by his given first name Michael.
Coincidentally, a day later, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought wrote Powell, asserting that cost overruns on the Fed renovation would require the central bank to “obtain a new approval from the NCPC.”
Blair, for the record, may not be objective. On the day that reports surfaced indicating Trump held a draft of a letter firing Powell, Blair posted on X an image of Powell as Marie Antoinette with the caption, “Let them eat basis points.”
And on Monday, after the Fed posted a video of the renovation to its website, Blair inferred the video was meant “instead of granting our site visit.”
“What do they not want us to see?” Blair wrote Monday on X.
Trump on Tuesday was relatively muted in his comments on Powell.
“I think he’s done a bad job, but he’s going to be out pretty soon anyway,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “Eight months, he’ll be out.”
By comparison, Trump last week cited the oft-maligned Fed renovation, saying of Powell: “I think he’s a total stiff, but the one thing I didn’t see him [as] is a guy that needed a palace to live in.”
Still, support for Powell among conservatives may be further on the wane. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, told Bloomberg on Wednesday he is “disenchanted” with Powell.
“I think all the scrutiny is appropriate,” he said. “I’m not even sure where the original constitutional authority is for the Fed.”
Johnson undoubtedly is referring to the push, led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, to examine the central bank’s non-monetary policy dealings.
“There is probably some need to reform, but we would have to study that very carefully before Congress got involved in any way to the extent we have jurisdiction over it,” Mike Johnson said. “You would not want to do it in a reckless manner.”
